Background: Originally published in the North County News about 10 years ago, after the 24-hour barn was painted over.
In the summer, of 2002, Roseburg resident Pete Nightingale paid tribute to a Sutherlin landmark. Here is an excerpt from his comments that appeared in the News-Review's Public Forum:
"...I have driven tractor trailer rigs for the past 15 years and I've covered most of the continental United States. Sutherlin is the only town I have ever seen to be graced with the likes of a 24-hour barn....
...When I come through Sutherlin, it serves as a landmark that I am almost home. It makes me feel warm inside to be able to see that building...
...That barn could be a national treasure, yet we have all taken it for granted simply because we live here, see it every day and don't assume it to be anything much...
...Now a street has been cut into the hill behind the barn and houses are being built. The barn will probably be torn down because people don't want to live next to a barn. Hey, the barn was there first. If you don't want to live by a barn, don't have your houses built there, but leave my barn alone!...
...My 24-hour barn - the only one I'll ever see in my lifetime - will have been torn down for the sake of progress..."
Nightingales's fears came to pass a couple of months ago. The 24-hour barn wasn't torn down, but it was painted over.
Shortly after Nightingales's letter was printed last year, I gave him a call. Nightingale told me he had talked with the owner of the barn, who assured him there were no plans to remove the 24-hour barn.
I guess the owner didn't want to risk having any protesters chain themselves to the barn, if he announced his remodeling plans in advance. Paint brushes would be no match against the fervor of 24-hour barn groupies clamoring around the structure one last time.
The 24-hour barn's colorful history dates back to the early 1970s. I remember the date well. Because I was born in 1966, and I was old enough to remember when my father, Milo Muirhead, painted the lettering on the barn. And I remember my mother got some free fuirts and begetables out of the deal.
The original sign contained three lines: "Farmers Market - Next Exit - 24 Hours." Several years after the sign came up, a four-by-eight piece of plywood containing part of the sign came down, leaving "24 Hours" all by itself on the barn. The owner at that time never bothered to have the barn re-painted.
My father gold me the wind had blown down the board, because it disappeared after the area had an unusually strong windstorm. However, one former owner said Lady Bird Johnson's clean highway policies from the 1960s, forced the removal of the sign in the 1970s.
Regardless of how it happened, the "24-hour" barn stood alone more than twenty-five years. Every time I'd drive by the barn, I'd always chuckle to myself, wondering what passers-by who didn't remember Farmer Market would think of "the barn that never closes." (2011 side note: One of my cohorts in the graduate program at the University of Oregon School of Education shocked me one day when she told me she thought the barn was racist, because some of her friends believed 24 hours was a warning sign and a holdover from days when people of a certain color had so many hours to leave the town!)
Farmers Market was located next to the former 4-Winds diner (not West Winds restaurant) at the south Sutherlin exit. An espresso stand and mobile home sale lot now occupy the same space. (2013 side note: Those businesses are now gone, too.) The Martin family initially opened their "Sutherlin Farms" produce stand on their Bingo Lane property off Nonpariel Road east of Sutherlin. My father even drove their egg truck a couple time up to the Willamette Valley, delivering Sutherlin Farms' fresh eggs to other retailers.
After glowing success with that venture, the Martins opened Farmers, Market, a completely enclosed 24-hour grocery store. The main building contained common household items and a bulk grain room off to the side. The enclosed, open-air structure in front of the main building contained gravel-floor aisles of locally-grown produce.
Long before fountain drinks became popular, Farmers Market was a great place to visit when one got the midnight munchies. And, you didn't always feel like they were robbing you with over-priced items like most 24-hour convenience stores of today. Long after the Martin family left the area, the 24-hour barn somehow kept Farmers Market alive.
I am sad to see the 24-hour barn disappear. It was one of the last visible signs of my late father's sign-painting days in Douglas County (1960-1991). His only other remaining sign work still standing is the Mohr Well Drilling barn at Wilbur, and the treated three-dimensional "B-O-W-L" plywood leers attached to the former Westwood Lanes bowling alley in Sutherlin. (2013 side note: That bowling alley is gone now, too, replaced by a McDonald's and a shopping plaza with a Dutch Bros. coffee stand).
Those signs will probably soon disappear as well. Progress forces change upon all of us. But in case the Sutherlin Tourism Committee ever runs out of ideas on how to spend its money, may I suggest erecting another 24-hour barn? If a truck driver from Roseburg found solace from the structure, I wonder how many other I-5 travelers looked forward to visiting Sutherlin, because we were the only place in the United States with a barn that never closes?
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